Web Analytics are freakin’ awesome.

Web analytics are awesome. They cut through all the crap, all the emotion and get down to the nitty-gritty of things. It doesn’t matter if the CEO’s wife really likes the color pink, or that the director of web services feels drop-down menus are bad fung shui, if you have web analytics you’ve got power.

Now web analytics are preceded by web reporting. This is the numbers part of the analytics. Who clicked what where and how long did they do it for. How many visitors came from China and what pages were they looking at. These numbers are produced by tools such as Webtrends and Web Side Story. They simply collect the information and present it in a customizable interface. They don’t recommend what to do, or the next course of action, but rather simply provide the numbers. This is where you can say to the CEO, “90% of our visitors are leaving the site from the pink page, they don’t seem to like it”.

The analysis is done by people. It is developing some Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) based on this information and taking action. KPIs are triggers things that you set out in advance to measure and determine success. For example if an online newspaper wanted to measure success they could do it in a number of ways; the number of new registrations, the number of subscribers to the RSS feed, the number of pages hit per day.

The analyst is looking to determine why something took place and what will work better. Now it is important to note that a web analyst must provide some real insight, which means they must understand the business model intimately. The newspaper for example might try redesigning it’s homepage putting a subscription link for the RSS feed above the fold.

Then the web reporting comes back into play with the new numbers. The web analyst can then, armed with these new numbers make more recommendations. Really it is a game of constant improvement based on actual data. It is however also possible to “optimize” youself into a corner. You can take a poorly planned site and improve it to the Nth degree but if the original premise is flawed then there is only so much you can do. It’s like making a Geo Metro into a racecar. You can continually improve it’s performance and tweak it to the nines but it will never compete against a Formula One car.

The best description I have heard is web reporting is like looking in the rearview mirror while web analysis is knowing about where you are coming from and where you are going to. Being aware of any obstacles and watching the road. Knowing the importance of web analytics (and the difference between this and web reporting) will help you get to your destination safely.

Notable links:

Web Analysis, Behavioral Targeting and Advertising
Web Reporting vs Web Analysis
VisualRevenue | Web Analytics & Affiliate Marketing blog